God Emperor of Dune

  "What space do they take?" Idaho rapped the chart with his knuckles. "A tenth of the City at most?"

  "Less than that."

  Idaho let his gaze wander pensively over the chart.

  "Are there other purposes in this design, m'Lord?"

  "It is dominated by the need for public viewing of my person."

  "There must be clerks, government workers, even common laborers. Where do they live?"

  "Mostly in the suburbs."

  Idaho pointed at the chart. "These tiers of apartments?"

  "Note the balconies, Duncan."

  "All around the plaza." He leaned close to peer down at the chart. "That plaza is two kilometers across!"

  "Note how the balconies are set back in steps right up to the ring of spires. The elite are lodged in the spires."

  "And they can all look down on you in the plaza?"

  "You do not like that?"

  "There's not even an energy barrier to protect you!"

  "What an inviting target I make."

  "Why do you do it?"

  "There is a delightful myth about the design of Onn. I foster and promote the myth. It is said that once there lived a people whose ruler was required to walk among them once a year in total darkness, without weapons or armor. The mythical ruler wore a luminescent suit while he made his walk through the night-shrouded throng of his subjects. And his subjects--they wore black for the occasion and were never searched for weapons."

  "What's that have to do with Onn ... and you?"

  "Well, obviously, if the ruler survived his walk, he was a good ruler."

  "You don't search for weapons?"

  "Not openly."

  "You think people see you in this myth." It was not a question.

  "Many do."

  Idaho stared up at Leto's face deep in its gray cowl. The blue-on-blue eyes stared back at him without expression.

  Melange eyes, Idaho thought. But Leto said he no longer consumed any spice. His body supplied what spice his addiction demanded.

  "You don't like my holy obscenity, my enforced tranquility," Leto said.

  "I don't like you playing god!"

  "But a god can conduct the Empire as a musical conductor guides a symphony through its movements. My performance is limited only by my restriction to Arrakis. I must direct the symphony from here."

  Idaho shook his head and looked once more at the city plan. "What're these apartments behind the spires?"

  "Lesser accommodations for our visitors."

  "They can't see the plaza."

  "But they can. Ixian devices project my image into those rooms."

  "And the inner ring looks directly down on you. How do you enter the plaza?"

  "A presentation stage rises from the center to display me to my people."

  "Do they cheer?" Idaho looked directly into Leto's eyes.

  "They are permitted to cheer."

  "You Atreides always did see yourselves as part of history."

  "How astute of you to understand a cheer's meaning."

  Idaho returned his attention to the city map. "And the Fish Speaker schools are here?"

  "Under your left hand, yes. That's the academy where Siona was sent to be educated. She was ten at the time."

  "Siona ... I must learn more about her," Idaho mused.

  "I assure you that nothing will get in the way of your desire."

  As he marched along in the Royal peregrination, Idaho was lifted from his reverie by awareness that the Fish Speaker chant was diminishing. Ahead of him, the Royal Cart had begun its descent into the chambers beneath the plaza, rolling down a long ramp. Idaho, still in sunlight, looked up and around at the glistening spires--this reality for which the charts had not prepared him. People crowded the balconies of the great tiered ring around the plaza, silent people who stared down at the procession.

  No cheering from the privileged, Idaho thought. The silence of the people on the balconies filled Idaho with foreboding.

  He entered the ramp-tunnel and its lip hid the plaza. The Fish Speaker chant faded away as he descended into the depths. The sound of marching feet all around him was curiously amplified.

  Curiosity replaced the sense of oppressive foreboding. Idaho stared around him. The flat-floored tube was artifically illuminated and wide, very wide. Idaho estimated that seventy people could march abreast into the bowels of the plaza. There were no mobs of greeters here, only a widely spaced line of Fish Speakers who did not chant, contenting themselves to stare at the passage of their God.

  Memory of the charts told Idaho the layout of this gigantic complex beneath the plaza--a private city within the City, a place where only the God Emperor, the courtiers and the Fish Speakers could go without escort. But the charts had told nothing of the thick pillars, the sense of massive, guarded spaces, the eerie quiet broken by the tramping of feet and the creaking of Leto's cart.

  Idaho looked suddenly at the Fish Speakers lining the way and realized that their mouths were moving in unison, a silent word on their lips. He recognized the word:

  "Siaynoq."

  "Another Festival so soon?" the Lord Leto asked.

  "It has been ten years," the majordomo said.

  Do you think by this exchange that the Lord Leto betrays an ignorance of time's passage?

  --THE ORAL HISTORY

  uring the private audience period preceding the Festival proper, many Dcommented that the God Emperor spent more than the allotted time with the new Ixian Ambassador, a young woman named Hwi Noree.

  She was brought down at midmorning by two Fish Speakers who were still full of first-day excitement. The private audience chamber beneath the plaza was brilliantly illuminated. The light revealed a room about fifty meters long by thirty-five wide. Antique Fremen rugs decorated the walls, their bright patterns worked in jewels and precious metals, all combined in weavings of priceless spice-fibers. The dull reds of which the Old Fremen had been so fond predominated. The chamber's floor was mostly transparent, a setting for exotic fishes worked in radiant crystal. Beneath the floor flowed a stream of clear blue water, all of its moisture sealed away from the audience chamber, but excitingly near Leto, who rested on a padded elevation at the end of the room opposite the door.

  His first view of Hwi Noree revealed a remarkable likeness to her Uncle Malky, but her grave movements and the calmness of her stride were equally remarkable in their difference from Malky. She did have that dark skin, though, the oval face with its regular features. Placid brown eyes stared back at Leto. And where Malky's hair had been gray, hers was a luminous brown.

  Hwi Noree radiated an inner peace which Leto sensed spreading its influence around her as she approached. She stopped ten paces away, below him. There was a classical balance about her, something not accidental.

  With growing excitement, Leto realized a betrayal of Ixian machinations in the new Ambassador. They were well along in their own program to breed selected types for specific functions. Hwi Noree's function was distressingly obvious--to charm the God Emperor, to find a chink in his armor.

  Despite this, as the meeting progressed, Leto found himself truly enjoying her company. Hwi Noree stood in a puddle of daylight which was guided into the chamber by a system of Ixian prisms. The light filled Leto's end of the chamber with glowing gold which centered on the Ambassador, dimming behind the God Emperor where stood a short line of Fish Speaker guards--twelve women chosen for their inability to hear or speak.

  Hwi Noree wore a simple gown of purple ambiel decorated only by a silver necklace pendant stamped with the symbol of IX. Soft sandals the color of her gown peeked from beneath her hem.

  "Are you aware," Leto asked her, "that I killed one of your ancestors?"

  She smiled softly. "My Uncle Malky included that information in my early training, Lord."

  As she spoke, Leto realized that part of her education had been conducted by the Bene Gesserit. She had their way of controlling her responses, of sensing the undertones in a conversation. H
e could see, however, that the Bene Gesserit overlay had been a delicate thing, never penetrating the basic sweetness of her nature.

  "You were told that I would introduce this subject," he said.

  "Yes, Lord. I know that my ancestor had the temerity to bring a weapon here in the attempt to harm you."

  "As did your immediate predecessor. Were you told that, as well?"

  "I did not learn it until my arrival, Lord. They were fools! Why did you spare my predecessor?"

  "When I did not spare your ancestor?"

  "Yes, Lord."

  "Kobat, your predecessor, was more valuable to me as a messenger."

  "Then they told me the truth," she said. Again, she smiled. "One cannot always depend on hearing truth from one's associates and superiors."

  The response was so utterly open that Leto could not suppress a chuckle. Even as he laughed, he realized that this young woman still possessed the Mind of First Awakening, the elemental mind which came in the first shock of birth-awareness. She was alive!

  "Then you do not hold it against me that I killed your ancestor?" he asked.

  "He tried to assassinate you! I am told you crushed him, Lord, with your own body."

  "True."

  "And next you turned his weapon against your own Holy Self to demonstrate that the weapon was ineffectual ... and it was the best lasgun we Ixians could make."

  "The witnesses reported correctly," Leto said.

  And he thought: Which shows how much you can depend on witnesses! As a matter of historical accuracy, he knew that he had turned the lasgun only against his ribbed body, not against hands, face or flippers. The pre-worm body possessed a remarkable capacity for absorbing heat. The chemical factory within him converted heat to oxygen.

  "I never doubted the story," she said.

  "Why has Ix repeated this foolish gesture?" Leto asked.

  "They have not told me, Lord. Perhaps Kobat took it onto himself to behave this way."

  "I think not. It has occurred to me that your people desired only the death of their chosen assassin."

  "The death of Kobat?"

  "No, the death of the one they chose to use the weapon."

  "Who was that, Lord? I've not been told."

  "It's unimportant. Do you recall what I said at the time of your ancestor's foolishness?"

  "You threatened terrible punishment should such violence ever again enter our thoughts." She lowered her gaze, but not before Leto glimpsed a deep determination in her eyes. She would use the best of her abilities to blunt his wrath.

  "I promised that none of you would escape my anger," Leto said.

  She jerked her attention up to his face. "Yes, Lord." And now her manner revealed personal fear.

  "None can escape me, not even the futile colony you've recently planted at ..." And Leto reeled off for her the standard chart coordinates of a new colony the Ixians had planted secretly far beyond what they thought were the reaches of his Empire.

  She betrayed no surprise. "Lord, I think it was because I warned them you would know of this that I was chosen as Ambassador."

  Leto studied her more carefully. What have we here? he wondered. Her observation had been subtle and penetrating. The Ixians, he knew, had thought distance and enormously magnified transportation costs would insulate the new colony. Hwi Noree thought not and had said so. But she believed her masters had chosen her as Ambassador because of this--a comment on the Ixian caution. They thought they had a friend at court here, but one who also would be seen as Leto's friend. He nodded as the pattern took shape. Quite early in his ascendancy he had revealed to the Ixians the exact location of the supposedly secret Ixian Core, the heartland of the technological federation which they governed. It had been a secret the Ixians thought safe because they paid gigantic bribes for it to the Spacing Guild. Leto had winkled them out by prescient observation and deduction--and by consulting his memories, where there were more than a few Ixians.

  At the time, Leto had warned the Ixians that he would punish them if they acted against him. They had responded with consternation and accused the Guild of betraying them. This had amused Leto and he had responded with such a burst of laughter that the Ixians were abashed. He had then informed them in a cold and accusatory tone that he had no need of spies or traitors or other ordinary trappings of government.

  Did they not believe he was a god?

  For a time thereafter, the Ixians were responsive to his requests. Leto had not abused the relationship. His demands were modest--a machine for this, a device for that. He would state his needs and presently the Ixians would deliver the required technological toy. Only once had they tried to deliver a violent instrument into one of his machines. He had slain the entire Ixian delegation before they could even unwrap the thing.

  Hwi Noree waited patiently while Leto mused. Not the slightest sign of impatience surfaced.

  Beautiful, he thought.

  In view of his long association with the Ixians, this new stance sent the juices coursing through Leto's body. Ordinarily, the passions, crises and necessities which had produced and impelled him burned low. He often felt that he had outlived his times. But the presence of a Hwi Noree said he was needed. This pleased him. Leto felt that it might even be possible that the Ixians had achieved a partial success with their machine to amplify the linear prescience of a Guild navigator. A small blip in the flow of great events might have escaped him. Could they really make such a machine? What a marvel that would be! Purposefully, he refused to use his powers for even the smallest search through this possibility.

  I wish to be surprised!

  Leto smiled benignly at Hwi. "How have they prepared you to woo me?" he asked.

  She did not blink. "I was provided with a set of memorized responses for particular exigencies," she said. "I learned them as I was required, but I do not intend to use them."

  Which is exactly what they want, Leto thought.

  "Tell your masters," he said, "that you are precisely the right kind of bait to dangle in front of me."

  She bowed her head. "If it pleases my Lord."

  "Yes, you do."

  He indulged himself then in a small temporal probe to examine Hwi's immediate future, tracing the threads of her past through this. Hwi appeared in a fluid future, a current whose movements were susceptible to many deflections. She would know Siona in only a casual way unless ... Questions flowed through Leto's mind. A Guild steersman was advising the Ixians and he obviously had detected Siona's disturbance in the temporal fabric. Did the steersman really believe he could provide security against the God Emperor's detection?

  The temporal probe took several minutes, but Hwi did not fidget. Leto looked at her carefully. She seemed timeless--outside of time in a deeply peaceful way. He had never before encountered a common mortal able to wait thus in front of him without some nervousness.

  "Where were you born, Hwi?" he asked.

  "On Ix itself, Lord."

  "I mean specifically--the building, its location, your parents, the people around you, friends and family, your schooling--all of it."

  "I never knew my parents, Lord. I was told they died while I was still an infant."

  "Did you believe this?"

  "At first ... of course. Later, I built fantasies. I even imagined that Malky was my father ... but ..." She shook her head.

  "You did not like your Uncle Malky?"

  "No, I didn't. Oh, I admired him."

  "My reaction precisely," Leto said. "But what of your friends and your schooling?"

  "My teachers were specialists, even some Bene Gesserit were brought in to train me in emotional control and observation. Malky said I was being prepared for great things."

  "And your friends?"

  "I don't think I ever had any real friends--only people who were brought in contact with me for specific purposes in my education."

  "And these great things for which you were trained, did anyone ever speak of those?"

  "Malky said I wa
s being prepared to charm you, Lord."

  "How old are you, Hwi?"

  "I don't know my exact age. I guess I'm about twenty-six. I've never celebrated a birthday. I only learned about birthdays by accident, one of my teachers giving an excuse for her absence. I never saw that teacher again."

  Leto found himself fascinated by this response. His observations provided him with certainty that there had been no Tleilaxu interventions into her Ixian flesh. She had not come from a Tleilaxu axlotl tank. Why the secrecy, then?

  "Does your Uncle Malky know your age?"

  "Perhaps. But I haven't seen him for many years."

  "Didn't anyone ever tell you how old you were?"

  "No."

  "Why do you suppose that is?"

  "Maybe they thought I'd ask if I were interested."